Fender Bender

One afternoon a few weeks ago, Jennifer Philbin, a writer for “The O.C.,” was driving her BMW in heavy traffic on Wilshire Boulevard, in Los Angeles, when she passed the remnants of an accident. She turned to look and promptly ran into the car in front of her—a Saab wagon. She and the Saab’s driver, a man in his late forties, pulled over to assess the damage. There didn’t seem to be any; she had hardly been moving. Nonetheless, the man insisted on summoning a police officer. Eventually, one came over from the other accident, examined the Saab’s bumper, and said, “I don’t really see anything here.” The driver of the Saab, citing possible “structural damage,” was adamant. The policeman filled out an accident report.

These particulars, and many that followed, came to light the other day, thanks to the efforts of Philbin’s fiancé, Michael Schur, a twenty-nine-year-old Harvard graduate and a writer for the NBC sitcom “The Office,” who converted his indignation over the fender bender into a campaign both to embarrass the Saab driver and to raise money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. In two mass e-mails, and then on a blog, he dissected the incident and its moral implications, striving to turn his inner Larry David into an inner Augustine, or, at least, an inner Oprah.

Schur’s involvement began several days after the accident, when Saab Guy, as Schur christened him, called Philbin to report that there was a crease in his bumper’s plastic cover and that it would cost $836.96 to fix. This news prompted Schur to commandeer the phone and demand digital photos.

The man responded, according to Schur, “It really isn’t the kind of thing that shows up in a photograph.”

So instead Schur paid a visit to the garage at Saab Guy’s office. (“It might not surprise you to find out that the man is a lawyer,” Schur’s e-mail said.) Together, the two men inspected the car. “I kid you not,” Schur wrote. “You have to be within six inches of the bumper to see the ‘crease.’ ”

Saab Guy told Schur, “Look, I could live with it, but I just don’t want to.” Schur pointed out that petty accident claims contribute to skyrocketing insurance rates.

“I don’t care about insurance rates,” the lawyer replied.

“You should care,” Schur said. “You’re a resident of this city, and it’s a huge problem.” Schur then thought of something about which the lawyer should care even more. He proposed, on the spot, to contribute the $836.96 to the Red Cross in Saab Guy’s name, to help provide relief to the victims of Katrina. The lawyer didn’t seem interested. He wanted his bumper fixed. But Schur kept after him. Finally, the lawyer said, “O.K., I’ll think about it.”

Schur went to meet some friends, who agreed that a creased bumper, when measured against a calamity like Katrina, was trivial indeed, and they, too, immediately pledged donations in Saab Guy’s name. Within an hour, Schur had raised $1,936, which inspired him to try for more. He wrote his first mass e-mail, asking for donations to the “Mike Schur Saab Guy Katrina Fund” from people who’d already given on behalf of the hurricane’s victims, from those who had not, or from those who merely, as he wrote, “just want to see Saab Guy shamed like the jerk he is.” If Saab Guy agreed to the arrangement, the donations would be made in his name. If he didn’t, the donations could be made under “Saab Guy Is an Asshole.” The e-mail shot out into the world. Within hours, friends, and friends of friends, had pledged nearly twelve thousand dollars. “This is the greatest thing ever,” Schur wrote. By the next day, the haul was up to thirty thousand.

But then came the qualms. Since launching the campaign, Schur and Philbin had occasionally looked at each other and said, “Why do I feel bad?” Of the hundreds of responses they received, only a few were negative, but one of those, from someone they didn’t know, put into words their sense of unease. Their campaign, the e-mailer wrote, was “extremely distasteful,” not only because they were exploiting the tragedy of Katrina but because Saab Guy had every right to his money, since his car had been damaged and he had been hit from behind. Schur and Philbin stayed up until 2 a.m. working over the ethical implications. Schur wondered, “Well, I drive a thirty-four-thousand-dollar Acura TL. Who am I to tell people that they should donate to charity?” He asked himself whether he should sell his watch, buy a cheap one, and donate the difference. “It’s a slippery slope,” he said.

The next morning, Schur found himself paralyzed by, and luxuriating in, his misgivings. Vengeful philanthropy: it was a category unto itself. He spent a couple of hours cold-calling ethics professors around the country. A consensus emerged that the problem lay in the desire to induce shame. Charity was good, but spite was not. He worked up the courage to call Saab Guy again, and he reiterated his offer, adding that some friends of his had also pledged money. “I don’t want to say he ignored it, but he kept going on with his thought process,” Schur recalled. “He did say, though, that he’d been thinking about whether he was being petty.” Saab Guy didn’t ask Schur how much had been pledged, and Schur didn’t go out of his way to tell him. Nor did Schur mention the sprawl of his campaign, the blog, or the fact that a charitable enterprise had been launched under the banner “Saab Guy Is an Asshole.”

At any rate, Saab Guy made a counteroffer: “What if I take some part of your money and give it to charity and use some part of it to fix my bumper?”

Schur said, “That sounds great,” and sent him a check for the full amount, restoring what Schur called “a fairly delicate balance in the universe.”

“It’s possible he thinks of me as a morally high-handed little snotnosed jerk who tried to tell him what to do with his money,” Schur reflected. “It’s also possible that he thinks the next time someone bumps into him he shouldn’t care as much.”

Neither, really. “He was a very thoughtful, nice young man,” Saab Guy said last Friday. He called the affair a “non-issue,” and noted that Schur’s check was still sitting next to his phone, uncashed. “I’m actually still trying to figure out whether to just send it back.”